Versatility for Unknown Worlds: Mobile Sensors and Self-reconfiguring Robots

In this paper we propose mobile sensors and self-reconfiguring robots to increase the versatility of mobile robots in unstructured environments. Mobile sensors enrich the class of on-line algorithms that can be performed with fixed architecture robots by providing flexibility in information gathering and extraction from the world. A self-reconfiguring robot can autonomously and dynamically reconfigure in a variety of shapes to support multiple modalities of locomotion, manipulation, and sensing. We describe experiments with mobile sensors and self-reconfiguring robots.

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